In From Dust, you control The Breath, a god-like entity with the power to move terrain elements, like water, soil or lava, from one place to another. Your job is to guide a tribe of humans as they seek their origins, while preventing them from perishing due to natural disasters. These humans, in turn, will expand their settlements, their prayers and relics enhancing your powers.

It's a nifty, inventive game that's all but forgotten nowadays. Generally speaking, god games revolve building around micromanaging your humans and their tasks, but in From Dust, the forces of nature are at the forefront, in all their power and danger, with humans, frail creatures whose lives can end on a whim, as mere spectators.

The game features a campaign mode and a large amount of challenge stages that present you with different scenarios, your job being to either nudge the tribe along to a goal, or protect them from impending disasters, like fires and floods. Instead of micromanaging, it instead focuses on the crisis management aspect of its genre, which makes for a novel experience.

Also noteworthy is the quality of its physics and terrain simulation, which as far as I'm concerned, was something unseen at the time of its release. Spilling water will have it gently flow across the terrain, while earth and lava will smoothly settle. With time, vegetation will come to cover the land. With that and some stellar sound design, From Dust's world not only looks, it feels alive.

I Just Think It's Neat™ and I wish someone would expand on this idea.